Tagged: mission

Matthew 28:16-20

This text is used for the Lectionary Year A on June 11, 2017.

Matthew 28:16-20 is a foundational text of Christianity, one of its most inspired statements, a summary of its faith, a mandate at the heart of its every ambition, and a profound picture of how the Christian life of mission participates in the Trinitarian life of God. Almost anyone who calls her/himself Christian will recognize it and will need to respond to it, and everyone who is not Christian falls under its purview. In these four short verses, Matthew’s Gospel anticipates the extraordinary reality of something that began as an oddball reinterpretation of a cultic religion at the dusty edge of a waning empire and became the most powerful religion and cultural force the world has ever known: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (NRSV).

It is also a principal warrant for some of the worst things associated with and attributed to Christianity. The long, sad, and continuing history of European colonization took place under the aegis of these words. It is a history that would see the decimation of whole nations of people, the ending of linguistic worlds, the evisceration of beautiful and beautifully harmonious ecologies, the cultivation of and enculturation into an economy of slavery based on body type, where human beings would be, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “thingified” in the name of Christion mission. Such practices (typically brutal, systematic, and unending) were part of what European and American Christians termed “a duty to propagate their religion among the heathens.” This duty especially when couched in the terms of Matthew 28 became the impetus to colonize, enslave, and forcibly educate. Recently, Pope Francis recognized this tendency, no doubt lamenting the church’s track record of doing the very thing Christians self-righteously attribute to others: “Today, I don’t think that there is a fear of Islam as such but of ISIS and its war of conquest, which is partly drawn from Islam… However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, regarding the same idea of conquest.”

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Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

This text is used for the Lectionary Year C on July 3, 2016.

ByzanticonThere are few better metaphors for the spiritual life than “journey”; the concepts of movement, growth, purpose, and destination resonate with and illuminate our experiences. The same metaphor is equally apt for congregational life, especially as we consider the church’s presence, identity, and mission in our current cultural landscape. Luke’s long and intriguing motif of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem can be instructive. For the pastor looking to sustain a congregation’s self-understanding and growth during the more relaxed months of summer, Luke provides plenty of material for reflection. In the crush of preparing weekly sermons, many of us get in the habit of reading only the assigned Scripture, or perhaps also the passages immediately before and after it. Given the importance of the journey motif in Luke, the preacher would be well served by reading this entire section (Luke 9:51-19:28). This overview can give a helpful framework for preaching from now through October, and might help the pastor even structure the sermons over this sweep of time as a kind of journey with Jesus.

This passage from Luke 10, which follows immediately from the previous week’s lection, takes place very soon after the journey has begun. Jesus had been rejected by a village of inhospitable Samaritans (Luke 9:53) and then pursued by some enthusiastic would-be followers (Luke 9:57-62). Having previously sent a pair of messengers ahead of him to prepare a village to receive him (and before that, having appointed and sent out the Twelve to heal, to exorcise demons, and to proclaim the kingdom of God), Jesus now commissions a much larger group. There is a sense here already, this early in the journey, of the growth of his mission.

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Luke 7:1-10

This text is used for the Lectionary Year C on May 29, 2016.

Paolo Veronese
Paolo Veronese

Jesus has just concluded his Sermon on the Plain. Whereas Matthew’s Jesus has preached a Sermon on the Mount, emphasizing Jesus’ authority from on high, Luke characteristically has Jesus preaching from a “level place,” among the people. Luke’s Jesus will show his authority by what he does in history working from below, so to speak.

Now we see that authority operating in a healing story in nearby Capernaum. This town is ground zero of Jesus’ Galilean ministry, the home of Simon Peter and a crossroads of trade on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus is met by a delegation of Jewish town elders who intercede on behalf a Roman military leader. This man is a centurion, likely working under Herod Antipas and commanding troops responsible for tax collecting and keeping order. We are also told that he is a worthy man. He has had unusually good relations with the local Jews and generously paid for the building of their synagogue. This establishes his credentials with the Jewish leaders.

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Luke 4:14-21

This text is used for the Lectionary Year C on January 24, 2016.

Hermano Leon Clipart
Hermano Leon Clipart

The preacher will certainly want to spend time in prayer before writing this sermon, otherwise capturing the essence of the moment in Luke’s gospel may prove difficult. We’re told in this opening act of Jesus’ public ministry that he returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, a state that Jesus claims for himself with the opening line from Isaiah. One might assume that Jesus is always filled with this kind of power, but Luke seems to suggest otherwise. The Spirit of the Lord has come upon Jesus in a particular way, for a particular purpose, at this particular time. How, when and why did this happen?

Some answers come when we consider what has occurred before. It might be tempting to read this story in a vacuum, in which case the reader will assume that Jesus’ empowerment is instantaneous and happens simply because he is Jesus.  However, the Spirit does not empower him without cause or context. Jesus has spent years in thoughtful, prayerful preparation, growing in favor with God and others (Luke 2:52). His vocation was then affirmed (Luke 3:16-17) just before he was baptized (Luke 3:21), filled with the Spirit and then led by the Spirit through a season of formational testing in the desert (Luke 4:1-2). Two things worth noting here: 1) it’s not coincidental that the pattern of Jesus’ life bears resemblance to the story of Israel. Before Jesus announces the fulfillment Isaiah’s promise, he passes through the waters and is led into the dessert to wrestle with temptations like miraculously making bread. The preacher might decide to do something with this. 2) Spiritual power didn’t just come over Jesus in the synagogue, it came with him, and powerfully worked through him, because he had waited and worked so powerfully with it over an extended period of time. In other words, when Jesus returned home to launch his public ministry, he came spiritually prepared, and the gospel writer does not want us to miss this.

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